


Hackysack

by Dovey



Category: Naruto
Genre: Genin AU, Multi, genin era au, genin team au, honeypot au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-06-01 15:26:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15146093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dovey/pseuds/Dovey
Summary: When Kakashi passes on including 'team chaperone' Sakura as one of his genin, it allows her the chance to get claimed by a much more invested nin as an apprentice. Sakura has the makings of a honeypot extrodinaire, and all it'll take is a little guidance and practice for her to prove it.this fic is a lighthearted one, so while the term "honeypot" is used it's all about emotional manipulation and flirting, no sexual stuff whatsoever.





	1. Chapter 1

Unwillingly, Kakashi finds himself agreeing to take on a genin team.

When he sees his assigned students files, however, he makes a demand. 

“The girl is a waste.” He says. “A total mismatch for the skills of the team. I won’t be able to teach her anything, and she’ll distract from the two that are why you’re assigning me in the first place. Hasn’t anyone expressed an interest in her?” 

He looks over her record again, swiftly, and pushes. “She’s got high marks in the educational section, I’m sure a paper nin could apprentice her. She’s a civilian-born, so she’s likely in this for the eventual paycheck anyways…”

“Are you sure? She’s the only one Iruka says could properly balance out your team. An apprenticeship was requested, but if I accept it, there’s no changing your mind, Kakashi.”

He nods. “Give me a filler agent and do whatever you want with the girl. It’s the most practical option.” 

He doesn’t see her bright, smiling face again until three months later.  It’s remarkable, really, how well a student can thrive with the right encouragement. 

They’re trying to finish weeding, struggling under the hot sun and the humid air, when the girl seems to stumble by accidentally. Kakashi keeps a close eye on her, and the glint of a headband in the trees behind her hint at him exactly why she’s here. 

All teams have training, after all, even the more unusual ones. 

She lets Naruto help her up, lets him hold her hand a moment too long- Kakashi wants to laugh at the starstruck look on his genin’s face, the innocent sort of expression it’s hard to spot on a ninja in normal situations. Instead, he buries his nose deeper into his book, content to allow the girl her practice. 

She’s good. She bites her lip, a civilian gesture that would risk a trained nin punctured skin, and asks if they need any help. Naruto seems torn between reassuring her that he’s strong enough to handle it all on his own, or begging the girl into staying around longer. Sasuke replies instead, telling her, “Buzz off, Sakura.” 

She blushes, a moment too late to be genuine- and oh, Aki must have trained her well if she can already do that on command- and backs off a little bit. 

“At least take my water!” She suggests, pulling out a water bottle from her pouch. Ah, so there’s the test, and a good one for his little genin too.  _ Never accept food from strangers, especially other nin.  _ He’d never mentioned it, but it was a standard rule taught in the academy and repeated often in survival training, of which he’d forced them to take at least twice. 

If they were paying attention to their lessons, they would refuse. Instead, the boys squabble over who gets to drink from it first. Naruto demands it since he’s the one who helped her, and Sasuke claims it by smacking his teammate on the head and making a grab for it before he can. The girl waves and walks away, as if the entire situation was happenstance and she had somewhere to be. Perhaps she did- Kakashi doubted they were the first genin team she’d ‘run into’ that day. 

The headband glints again from the trees, a polite goodbye and thank you to him for allowing her student the practice. Kakashi nods in response, and when the boys have finished off the water and returned to weeding, he turns his attention to the pair of them.

“Boys… do you know who that girl was?”

“It was Sakura-chan! She was so cute and pretty and awesome in the academy and now she’s even nice~!” 

Sasuke snorted. “She didn’t bother me.” Is all he offers, but from him it’s practically a ringing endorsement. 

Kakashi rolled his eyes. “Listen, you have to be very careful around her- she’s going to be a very different case from your other opponents in the exam.” 

“Huh? Sakura-chan? No way, she’s not an opponent, she’s one of my most special people!” Naruto protested, waving the water bottle as proof. Sasuke seemed in agreement that she wasn’t an enemy, but obviously for different reasons. 

Well. They’d have to learn eventually, and if they weren’t willing to listen to their Jounin-sensei, he’d just have to let them suffer the embarrassment from the chuunin exams. Aki would never let a teammate pass up an easy mark, after all, and his boys were proving perfect ones. 


	2. all around the mulberry bush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> her chunin exam

It was odd, seeing her former classmates as marks, but the truth was… they were easy ones. Much easier than some of the others. Naruto was open and simple, Sasuke reserved and simple- they both just wanted to feel strong, needed, and to beat each other at something. 

So when Ichika-sensei says she’s ready to enter the chuunin exams, Sakura had very few reservations about putting that knowledge to use. It wouldn’t hurt them, not in the long term, and Ichika-sensei always told her to put herself first, the mission second, and the marks wherever they fell. She wasn’t so good at that just yet, but she was getting better at it, and she desperately wanted to make Ichika-sensei and Habiki-senpai proud. 

Sakura’d had to pass the genjutsu trick and the written test same as everyone else; it was only now, in the second part of the exam, that her task differs. It’s simple, really- worm her way into a place of trust with as many people as possible. Proof was a mark discreetly placed on their forehead, that would only show at the end of the exam to the practitioners looking for it. Habiki-senpai had passed his test by winning over teams he followed the first two days or so, observing and strategizing for. Ichika-sensei had said she’d passed by singling out vulnerable group members in moments of isolation. Sakura, however, was challenging herself. She didn’t want to wait, didn’t want to risk losing opportunities to the paranoia that she suspects will arise as the days pass on. She’s a civilian girl who was passed over once already, and now she’s in a specialized task force- she can’t afford to be  _ average _ . She has to prove Ichika-sensei made the right choice. 

She barely waited for the exam to start, only a few hours, before setting her trap for the most gullible marks she knew. She slashed at her own skin- superficial injuries for pity- and dirtied herself up, and found a spot on their route to wait. (It was easy to tell where they were headed; no diversions or alterations in their course at all. It was rather shameful, actually. Sakura can only hope other Konoha teams are doing a better job of it, for village pride at the very least.)   

“Sakura-chan, what happened?” Naruto called out, pinwheeling to a halt on the branch just before hers. 

She forced tears, but nothing too strong. “My teammates left without me.” She mumbled, trying very hard to press her concern. “We got attacked and the guy thought I had the scroll and he kept me and the others just  _ left  _ and he only left me alone because he thought I was too weak to waste energy taking out and now I’m lost!” 

“Shut up.” Sasuke commands, but he's leaped onto the same branch as her and barely hiding his inspection of her injuries. Quickly, in case he notices just how shallow they are, she jerks to a standing position next to him and tugs at Naruto’s hand. 

“Come on, we have to move! I’m sure I heard someone nearby.” She warned, trying to find the right line between hysterical and sweet to sell it. “I promise I won’t slow you down!” She adds, staring hopefully at Sasuke, and the boy acquises so quickly it practically gives her whiplash. The third boy, quiet and coming up in the very back, is shooting her looks that tell her she’s been made, but his behaviors fall perfectly in line with every ANBU sign that Ichika-sensei had her memorize. He’s a filler teammate, probably included to make sure the Uchiha Heir would be in the final showing, which means this exam isn’t important to him and she might be able to get him to keep playing along out of professional courtesy. 

She makes sure to keep up with them, but not  _ too  _ easily, forcing huffing breaths out instead of proper even ones and allowing her legs to tremble slightly from ‘exhaustion’ (adrenaline, but rule one was that people would assume the results mean what they expect and she can see in her impromptu team’s eyes that they’re seeing exactly what she wants them too.) The ANBU boy keeps glancing at her with some amusement, obviously delighting in the charade. She slips him a small smile in return, unable to contain her satisfaction at having an impressed audience along for the ride.

They make quick pace, but she’s sure to direct them away from any conflicts, uncertain how well the boys would handle a real fight and certain that she wouldn’t be much help. The ANBU boy would obviously be fine, but she’s got no idea if he’s undercover or not and it wouldn’t be fair to ruin it for him if he is. That’s not her test here, anyways, and she wants to laugh at how easy hers is proving in comparison. 

She takes first watch, and then fifth- which Sasuke seemed intent on letting her sleep through, out of concern or more likely a dedication to his task she would never understand. Still. It’s easy, on her second turn on watch, to place the seal on both boy’s foreheads that would prove she’d been trusted near their sleeping forms. The third boy- Sai, his name is- happily lets her, so long as he’s close enough to ‘prevent any harmful actions’, just in case. He doesn’t let her mark his own forehead, but she thinks that’s fair and doesn’t argue. He seems rude when he bothers to speak, but with a sense of humor, so she avoids pushing any boundaries and leaves it at that. 

She kept watch the rest of her turn until daybreak, and cooked them all breakfast with a cheerfulness she didn’t need to force because she was already on her way to succeeding. 

Her plan for the day was simple and easy to formulate: she’d direct them towards a battle, and let herself be caught. Sasuke was too dedicated to bother wasting time on a tag-along, and Naruto would be quickly dissuaded with the reminder that losing this exam could prevent him from becoming Hokage. Sai, of course, would likely know exactly what her intentions are, given his understanding of her motivations, so she has nothing to worry about there.

As far as she’s concerned, things go exactly to plan. They run near a team from rain, and just when the sounds become obvious to Naruto- slowest to notice the danger, so distracted he is by fretting over if they’ll be the first team to finish or not- Sakura allows herself to slip and fall into the path of the group. She catches Sai’s amused expression as she does, and makes note to learn more falls and clumsy tricks from Habiki-senpai after this. There’s no reason to expect her to fool ANBU right now, but she hates being behind when she knows she could do better.

Sai’s nice enough to hold Naruto back from his instinctive leap after her, maybe as payback for all the entertainment. That turns it from an immediate hit to a delayed spat, one that lets her sneak away when it was obvious that the leaf side was going to win. 

She finds her way to a sound team, and hesitates briefly before shrugging off her nerves. If she can’t infiltrate agents from outside konoha, there’s no point. She has to try. 

The team is….odd. The boys in it are cruel, outstandingly so, but they seem happy to have an audience, especially since she’s no threat to them. They  _ like  _ that she’s a Konoha runt, proof that Konoha nin aren’t so faithful to their teams as they like to brag. It wouldn’t work, though, if the girl hadn’t gotten attached quickly. Sakura feels a little bad about it, but it was so  _ obvious-  _ she’s a competent girl, but stuck on a team of egotistical boys. All she’d want is a young girl looking up to her, a confidence boost and a comrade wrapped up with a bow. 

The sound team is eager for fights, and it’s even faster than she expected to get traded on. (She’d marked them all, first- the first boy while he was showing off, and she asked to take a closer look at his headband. The second when he got a little too close to make fun of her protector, instead, and she poked him in the forehead as a sort of joke. She felt the worst about the girl, so when she left the mark on her head- brushing the girl’s hair back into a braid for her- she slipped an extra roll of bandages into the girl’s pack. Too soft, maybe, but Ichika-sensei said she was allowed to be, so long as she did the job.) 

The next team, from rain, collects her as a bargaining chip, and when it fails to provoke a response beyond the sound boys laughing and the sound girl shifting uncomfortably in place, the rain genin bring her with them to make up for the comrade that fell during the bargaining. Sakura tries very hard not to think about them. 

Being a makeshift replacement makes it easy to leave the marks, but hard to leave the team entirely. It’s only after they decide to give up on the scrolls and get to the tower without them, to pass up the chance of entering the next exam at all, that she feels comfortable seperating. After that- well. More importantly, really, is what’s happening to team seven. 

\--

It’s ridiculous. She’s like some kind of hackeysack, as far as Sasuke can tell, because they’ve been trailing after her for the past day and a half, and she’s been on six teams at least as it’s gone on.

First they’d had to figure out what happened to her during the spat with the rain team that she’d accidentally caused in the first place; it had earned them the heaven scroll they needed, but Naruto had refused to go on to the tower without making sure Sakura-chan was okay first. Sasuke...begrudgingly had to admit he would’ve insisted the same, worst come to worst. The forest was difficult enough with three people, two of them competent; sakura seemed unlikely to survive on her own. 

Apparently she’d been with a sound team, briefly, according to a pair of rain genin they’d run into. Then she’d been with them, and then,  _ gone.  _ It had taken a full half a day to find out she’d been first taken captive by a snow team, and then that team had been thoroughly beaten by Ino’s team. By the time team seven had caught up with them, she’d been passed off to a more experienced and skilled leaf team, since Shikamaru had decided she was slowing down an already far too slow team- Choji and Ino had both been hurt when they collected the earth scroll they’d needed. 

When they  _ finally _ caught up with the older leaf team, they found an infatuated taijutsu specialist, a doting fujinitso specialist, and a prodigy feeling some guilt over using her as bait for another opponent that had backfired. 

By the time they find  _ that  _ particular team, it’s truly feeling like a disaster of a day, because all they find are corpses. And no Sakura. 

Then they get informed that she was spotted getting  _ dragged along  _ by that terrifying sand nin team, mostly unharmed if unwilling, and Sasuke is prepared to give up, he really is. 

You know, if giving up was an option he was ever willing to consider, or one that could even enter Naruto’s vocabulary. And Sai seemed perfectly fine with tagging along with their decisions, as dumb as they may be, so- with only a half a day left to find the tower- they go off to try and find a team of sociopathic suna nin and their oldest, most annoying, most  _ civilian  _ of teammates. 

Kakashi-sensei’s going to be so mad, if he cares at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since this is...softer take onthe naruto verse (as soft as child soldiers as a concept can be, lmao) there's no danzo and no root. so sai gets to be an average prodigy-turned-to-ANBU-early who lives with his big adoptive brother and has a quiet sense of humor. he thinks sakura is funny.   
> naruto and sasuke are both nicer than sakura assumes they are. (they're also a little prejudiced against civilian born nin- naruto because of idealizing civie life, and sasuke because of his clan upbringing. boys, even civilians know how to punch things, yeah?)   
> used a few sources to try and find good names, major apologies if these translations are wrong i tried to find reputable websites!   
> Ichika means "the greatest entertainer", which seemed appropriate for her job. another translation said it meant "coldest one" which...also seems appropriate.   
> Habiki means "echo", which i thought could be a fun reference to narcissus AND the fact that he's ichika's backup.   
> and....now you see why the fic is called hackeysack, lol.

**Author's Note:**

> i've had this in my drafts for ages so i figured i should just post it as a testrun and see if there's any interest in it! if so, i'll delve into sakura's training and why she's suited for the job, her growth as a person with two sympathetic instructors (ocs), and eventually...her fuckin' up the chuunin exams in the best way possible. also her NOT being on team seven actually brings her closer to the members of it, ironically. so you'd get dumb team 7 antics as a bonus.


End file.
